The English language has between 500,000 and 1,000,000 words, but a good graduate student will know about 60,000 of these at best. You should build your vocabulary because human beings do as much as 90% of their communication through words. A good vocabulary will improve your self-esteem, resulting in a better social life and greater success at your work place. A large vocabulary eliminates noises like 'uhh' and 'umm' in your verbal communication. This will help you project a more educated and intelligent image. Building vocabulary helps you communicate your thoughts, understand what others are saying, and understand what is going on around you better through comprehension and reading. There are several mistakes that people make when building vocabulary and you should learn what they are and possible remedies.
People make the mistake of learning to pass exams or to impress people. If you build your vocabulary this way, chances are that you will not remember the words once you have accomplished your mission. To remedy this, take vocabulary building as a life skill that has to be learnt throughout your lifetime.
Another common mistake as you build vocabulary is memorizing the new words without practice. Memorizing words like a parrot will lead to boredom and you will not get the context. To remedy this, learn a few words each day and use them in your writing or in your speech to memorize them. Learning 10 to 20 words per day is good enough. People often make the mistake of practising new words before they understand what they mean. This is disadvantageous in that you may learn the word, but you may not learn the context. Just as bad as lack of a good vocabulary is using words inappropriately.
People often memorize irrelevant words when building vocabulary. This often leads to boredom since you will not have a way of using the words. The English language is very rich and you should therefore memorize the words that you will be using in your profession or in your daily life.
People often make the mistake of using traditional methods of building vocabulary such as reading books, using wordbooks, reading dictionaries. These methods are often ineffective since they involve sight only. Scientists around the world are of the opinion that you learn more if you use all your senses in learning since you will then be able to associate the new words with your motor memory. There are several activities that can help you build your vocabulary. These learning methods ensure that you use sight, sound, smell, and touch to learn. Traditional methods of building vocabulary as seen by many to be boring and this is the reason why people spend a few minutes only in the activity or give up altogether. To remedy this, use interesting vocabulary-building methods. You could fill puzzles, play word games such as scrabble and Hig Pig, and play analogy, antonym, compound word, context, contraction, oxymoron, Latin learning, idioms and homophone, part of speech, root word, SAT, spelling, typing, phonics, prefix and suffix, synonym, and syllable games. Games and puzzles are interesting and you could play them for hours on end. A departure from tradition also means going for an online vocabulary builder. Going online saves you money, protects your anonymity, exposes you to a lot more resources, and gives you unparalleled convenience.
Belle Jose is the author of this article on Build Vocabulary. Find more information on Building Vocabulary here. |
